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One surefire way to increase your conversion rates is by using gated content. Thankfully, the following information will explain what gated content is, why it’s important, and provide you with a step-by-step guide to capturing valuable contact information through this strategy.
What is Gated Content?
Gated content is a digital marketing strategy where a business provides premium content such as eBooks, webinars, case studies, or research papers for website visitors in exchange for contact information, typically a name and email address, before accessing it. It assumes the fact that the information you are providing is of enough quality and relevance to a website visitor that they are willing to give you information and maybe even answer a few questions to get it. Used correctly and strategically, the use of gated content can be an incredibly useful marketing strategy for the right businesses.
Why is Gated Content Essential?
If you are committed to implementing gated content and desire to use it for lead generation, it’s important to keep the following aspects in mind. There can be times when gated content is looked at with an element of suspicion. Is this information worthwhile? What will these people do with my contact information once they get it? These are valid questions from consumers who are increasingly cautious when it comes to any kind of online marketing. Even with these concerns, a business can use gated content wisely, and both website visitors and businesses can benefit from the practice. Here are situations where a business will find it valuable:
Lead Generation
Gated content is a powerful lead-generation tool. By requiring contact information for access, you can grow your list of qualified leads. To put it simply, lead generation is the process you take in transforming a site visitor or general consumer into a potential or likely customer. Through gated content access, you will gain the information necessary to give customers what they need, nurture them down the buying funnel in a relevant and non-threatening way, and then follow up on qualified leads.
Targeted Marketing
With contact information, you can personalize your marketing efforts, creating targeted campaigns that resonate with your audience. This means you aren’t casting a huge net and hoping to reel in the right fish (but get a bunch you must throw back). Instead, it targets the most likely to become customers based on their beliefs, buying habits, financial situation, pain points, and more. Targeted marketing makes a great deal of sense as it gives you more bang for your marketing buck, ensuring your efforts work more efficiently as they are properly defined and enhanced to the right consumer. It also benefits the consumer by only giving them information that we know they are searching for.
Enhanced Data
Gated content not only captures email addresses but also provides insights into your audience’s interests, preferences, and pain points. As touched on briefly above, site visitors will have to enter their information, like their email addresses, in order to access gated content. Depending on what else you include in your gated questionnaire or sign-up process, you can also gain other insights that will help you better identify potential customers. You can ask a qualifying question, get them to select from a drop-down of preferences, or answer additional quantitative questions.
Creating an Effective Gated Content Strategy
High-quality gated content can be a great marketing strategy to garner targeted customers and move buyers through the purchasing process. But the term "high-quality" is key. Website visitors will be more comfortable downloading information if the tone of your website is one that gives them confidence in the relevancy of your gated information. In other words, having a blog or additional content will show them that you are a trusted authority on a particular topic. Sharing reviews and feedback, customer testimonials, etc. will go a long way to helping a consumer feel comfortable downloading information from your website.
Here is some additional information to keep in mind when planning a successful gated content strategy:
Understand Your Audience
Before creating gated content, understand your target audience. What problems do they face? What type of content would be more valuable to them? Tailor your content to meet their needs. In other words, don’t merely offer gated content for the heck of it. Instead, create valuable content that will benefit your target audience or the customers who are most likely to buy from you due to their preferences, personalities, and other personal qualities.
Choose the Right Content
Select content that provides in-depth insights or solutions to your audience’s challenges. It could be an industry report, a comprehensive guide, or exclusive access to webinars. Make sure that any information shared within this gated content is not something that is commonly found online. This should be “industry secrets” or a “VIP pass” to the most exclusive experience. After seeing the gated content, you want readers to be blown away with what they are reading or seeing or being invited to, not thinking, “Well, that’s something I already knew.”
Design an Enticing Landing Page
Create a compelling landing page that highlights the value of the gated content. Use persuasive copy and visually appealing elements to encourage visitors to share their contact information. Be sure to utilize your landing page properly as a guide for site visitors to lead them into the action you want them to take, which is to see the gated content, be intrigued by it, and want to know more. Keep landing pages fairly simple, meaning they aren’t too busy, causing visitors to miss the point. Instead, make sure the landing page works towards your goal of generating leads.
Formulate a Clear Value Proposition
Clearly communicate the benefits of accessing the gated content. Explain how it can solve their problems or improve their knowledge. To put it simply, a value proposition is a clear statement as to why a potential customer should choose your services or products or, in this case, enter information to gain access to valuable gated content.
Optimize Contact Forms
Keep the contact forms simple and require only essential information. The shorter the form, the more likely users will complete it. Let’s face it: in today’s digital age, there are forms to fill out virtually everywhere, from apps to stores to restaurants and everything in between. Therefore, in order to increase the chances of a customer filling in the content form, make it as short and to the point as possible and make sure it is mobile and user-friendly.
Promote Gated Content
Use various digital marketing channels like email marketing, social media, and pay-per-click advertising to promote your gated content. The idea is to get your gated content in front of as many potential interested individuals as possible. While ideally, this would happen organically, there is nothing wrong with tipping the scales in your favor a bit with pay-per-click or your own social media or email marketing strategies. After all, many potential customers might love the content you are offering and be interested if they only knew about it!
Follow-Up Personalized Communication
Once you have captured contact information, use it to send personalized emails and content to nurture your leads. Remember that professionals tend to have more than 200 emails in their inbox at any given time, according to Harvard Business Review. This means that you have to follow up and pursue potential leads and not give up after one attempt at contact.
Using Gated Content to Unlock Conversions
Gated content is a potent strategy for capturing contact information and driving conversions in your digital marketing campaigns. By offering valuable content in exchange for user data, you can build a stronger, more targeted audience and ultimately boost your conversion rates. 
